We Still Have Little Idea Who Weĺve Been Killing with Drones in Pakistan

Scott Shackford

October 17, 2014

The London-based Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has been working to identify those who
have been killed in Pakistan by American drone strikes and any
groups with whom they were affiliated. The latest news from their
project, titled "Naming the Dead," is that only four percent of the
2,379 people killed in 400 drone strikes in the country since 2004
can be identified as al Qaeda. That's just 84 people. Another 295
were identified as other "militants," and even that designation
might be a
little iffy:

Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of
these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few
corroborating details were available for those who were just
described as militants. More than a third of them were not
designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific
group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda ľ less than 4%
of the total number of people killed.

When asked for a comment on the Bureau's investigation, US
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that
strikes were only carried out when there was "near-certainty" that
no civilians would be killed.

"The death of innocent civilians is something that the U.S.
Government seeks to avoid if at all possible. In those rare
instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed
or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine
why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to
minimise such risk to non-combatants in the future," said
Hayden.

The report notes that the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force (AUMF) doesn't specifically say the president is authorized
only to strike members of al Qaeda and the Taliban, but rather
against those who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. It's a
bit problematic to argue these strikes are covered:

The CIA itself does not seem to know the affiliation of everyone
they kill. Secret CIA documents recording the identity, rank and
affiliation of people targeted and killed in strikes between 2006
to 2008 and 2010 to 2011 were leaked to the McClatchy news agency
in April 2013. They identified hundreds of those killed as simply
Afghan or Pakistani fighters, or as "unknown".

Determining the affiliation even of those deemed to be "Taliban"
is problematic. The movement has two branches: one, the Afghan
Taliban, is fighting US and allied forces, and trying to
re-establish the ousted Taliban government of Mullah Omar in Kabul.
The other, the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP, is mainly focused on
toppling the Pakistani state, putting an end to democracy and
establishing a theocracy based on extreme ideology. Although the US
did not designate the TTP as a foreign terrorist organisation until
September 2010, the group and its precursors are known to have
worked with the Afghan Taliban.

According to media reports, the choice of targets has not always
reflected the priorities of the US alone. In April last year the
McClatchy news agency reported the US used its drones to kill
militants in Pakistan's tribal areas in exchange for Pakistani help
in targeting al Qaeda members.

Early last summer NBC reporters got their hands on a classified
document that showed the United States often
doesn't know who it is killing in Pakistan or what their
militant affiliations were. At the time, I thought the revelations
would be a big deal. But that very same day was when the very first
story about
domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA)
dropped, thanks to a leaker that had not yet been identified as
Edward Snowden. And the rest was history.

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